Naturally

By Stuart Kellogg, Daily Press, Victorville, Calif.

Jan. 27–t Lindero Children’s Center, a preschool in Phelan, Jacob Fox, 5, described his family’s three horses to a circle of fellow pupils, and Amy Languid, 3 1 /2, invited them to pet her stuffed animal. Meanwhile, in Ann Martens’ classroom for first-, second- and third-graders at Mountain View Montessori Charter School in Victorville, Ira Haggis was writing a story about what it’s like to be a cat. Seated right beside Ira, Adam McFann practiced his cursive k’s. “Recently,” Martens remarked, “there’s been a great interest in cursive.” Both schools follow the methods developed by Dr. Maria Montessori, who on Jan. 6, 1907, opened Casa dei Bambini in Rome’s San Lorenzo district as a place where, by handling different objects, children could teach themselves and also teach each other. At Lindero, the children aren’t segregated by age, but their single, large classroom is divided into distinct areas. Dana Larrison, the school’s director, described these areas as

–art

–language

–library (children can either read to themselves or ask a teacher to read to them)

–the senses (everything from Braille to “sensory books” whose felt-cloth shapes teach such concepts as the difference between curved and straight)

–manipulation (playing with Legos teaches not only dexterity but also diplomacy: e.g., agreeing on what to build)

–practical life (“Anything that mimics life skills”). “In a traditional preschool,” Larrison said, “the 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds are grouped in separate rooms. “But in fact every child is an individual. It’s better to let them grow at their own pace. So we have a mixed-age classroom and allow a child to spend as much time in an area as he or she wants. This also helps them learn to make choices.” Work time is followed by housekeeping (each child is responsible for cleaning up after themselves), the sharing circle and lunch. “They bring their lunches from home but also make snacks here,” Larrison said. “When making snacks, they use glass, not plastic, and cut carrots and scrape potatoes with real knives. “That way, they learn how to handle these tools.” At Mountain View Montessori, the children do not study all in one big space. Instead, there’s a room for kindergarten and first grade, another room for grades one through three, a room for grades three through five, a room for ages 6 to 9 and a room for ages 9 to 12. As Gerri Terranova, head of school, explained: “These groupings are beneficial for peer-teaching. Dr. Montessori was interested in ‘developmental planes’ when children have similar interests.” According to Terranova, Mountain View, which belongs to the Victor Elementary School District, is the only elementary Montessori charter school in Southern California, “but there are several in Central and Northern California. There’s a Montessori high school in Redlands.” Mountain View, whose 85 students come from as far afield as Wrightwood and Apple Valley, has a waiting list. “We look for families who’ll make a good fit,” Terranova said. “Montessori is ‘education for life,’ education for the whole child not just for the mind. Sometimes visitors misinterpret the freedom in the classroom, but that’s because they don’t understand that the children and teachers all have ground rules.” For example, although children are free to choose an activity — in the room for grades three through five, for example, while some children were taking a math test and others wrote in their journals, Marisa Covarubias used a bead frame to subtract 1,487 from 2,579 — teachers will intervene to achieve balance, in academics as well as socialization. What’s more, each student has a weekly, written goal (a “contract” drawn up by the child and teacher), and once a week each child assesses their own manners, effort and quality of work. In the room for kindergarten and first grade — where James Roberts was matching the word “pig” to a little, pink toy pig — the aide was Judith Claridad, who trained in the Montessori method in the Philippines. As a little girl, Ann Martens, who teaches the first-throughthird-grade room at Mountain View, attended a Montessori school in Milwaukee, Wis. Later, she simultaneously completed two teaching-credential programs: a traditional program, for the school district and state; and the Montessori curriculum. Knowing both methods, Martens said: “I think one of the greatest advantages and challenges of teaching using the Montessori method is that when I look out at my classroom, I am able to see and teach 20 individuals. “Every single one of them has a different plan for the day — from their spelling levels, to their reading groups, to their math facts — and they are all working at different levels and progressing at different rates. “But I can accommodate all these diverse learners by presenting a wide range and variety of materials and lessons — when they are ready to receive them. This is something that cannot be predicted and prescribed by a textbook or a teacher’s manual.” At the Lindero Children’s Center, Larrison had expressed the same thought but in different words: “I observe the children, who tell me what to teach them.” Lindero opened 20 years ago, Mountain View seven years ago. But the High Desert has had a connection with Dr. Montessori’s method for much longer than that. Today, in Llano — on the north side of Pearblossom highway, at 166th Street East — the ruins of two stone chimneys and four smaller, stone pillars are all that remain of a community hall built by the Llano del Rio Colony, a utopian collective founded on May Day 1914. By 1916, more than 1,000 people belonged to the colony, which published two different newspapers, supported an orchestra and debating society — and ran a Montessori school. But because an earthquake fault at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains kept subterranean water from reaching their land, and because neighboring property-owners refused to sell them water, in 1917 the colony folded, and 200 of the 600 original members moved to Stables, La., which they renamed New Llano. The first female physician in Italy, Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was admitted to medical school only after Pope Leo XIII intervened in her behalf. “Because it was prohibited for women and men to be in the same room with a naked body,” Larrison said, “in order to dissect cadavers, Montessori had to work in the morgue at night and alone.” After graduating in 1896, she studied psychology and philosophy. According to Ter ranova, Montessori established her first school, Casa dei Bambini, to teach the children of laborers and also keep them out of trouble before they were old enough to enter a traditional school. Among her American supporters were Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller and President Woodrow Wilson’s daughter Margaret. In 1915, the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco included a glass schoolroom, a sort of fishbowl where children were free to handle objects in accord with Montessori’s philosophy. “It was after the world’s fair that word of Montessori’s method really took off,’ Larrison said. Among that method’s more intriguing tools are sandpaper numerals and alphabets (both cursive and print). Attracted by their satisfying gritty feel, a child naturally traces the letters and numbers with a finger: in effect, writing. “Dr. Montessori was an ‘eclectic borrower,’ ” Terranova said. “She first saw a sandpaper alphabet while supervising institutionalized, developmentally disabled children. She tapped into the value of touching and feeling, and brought the alphabet out to other schools.” Stuart Kellogg can be reached at 951-6240 or stuart@link.freedom.com

—–

Copyright (c) 2007, Daily Press, Victorville, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.